This application claims the benefit, under 35 U.S.C. § 365 of International Application PCT/EPO1/12332, filed Oct. 18, 2001, which was published in accordance with PCT Article 21(2) on Apr. 25, 2002 in English and which claims the benefit of European patent application No. 00402901.3 filed Oct. 19, 2000.
The document ‘Broadband Radio Access Networks (BRAN); HIPERLAN Type 2; Packet based convergence layer; Part 3: IEEE 1394 Service Specific Convergence Sublayer (SSCS)” defines a sublayer emulating the IEEE 1394 link layer over a ETSI BRAN Hiperlan 2 wireless network. As such, it may be present in bridge devices between wired 1394 busses, or in standalone wireless devices. When two busses are connected through a bridge, these two busses are still considered distinctly from the point of view of the IEEE 1394 standard. Moreover, since the sublayer has to be present in a standalone device, standard 1394 devices first have to be modified in order to be linked to a network through a wireless link.
Thus, the addition of a wireless link to a IEEE 1394 network results in the creation of a network of several busses that can be distinguished from each other by different bus identifiers (‘bus_ids’). The interconnection of the different busses (with different bus_ids) involves an IEEE 1394 bridge, which is currently under definition by the IEEE P1394.1 working group. Because of the use of different bus_ids, an application operating on bridges has to be bridge aware.